Celebrating DJ Funk in His Own Words and Mixtapes

DJ Funk once described his style as “…more like a megamix. It’s tracky and minimal most of the time—you’ll just have a beat, a bassline, a hi-hat, a clap, and a vocal sample. We pitched our stuff up to like 140 or 150 bpm—that brings more energy to it.” That furious, raucous energy powered a career that helped define Chicago’s ghetto house scene, where he became one of Dance Mania Records’ most consistently banging figures. Stripping dance music down to its rawest, most physical form, he and kindred spirits DJ Deeon, Paul Johnson, Robert Armani, and others turned wind-sprint drum machine workouts and raunchy call-and-response hooks into underground anthems. His influence stretched beyond Chicago, shaping ghettotech, juke, and countless club sounds that still pulse through dancefloors worldwide.

You can read brief obituaries on Funk, born Charles Chambers, in both The Guardian and Pitchfork, but neither captures the sheer wildness of what Funk and Dance Mania did in the 1990s. To understand that, you need to pop on one of DJ Funk’s mixes. They are very NSFW.

Funk spoke plainly and directly about his work over the years. In the following collection of interviews and statements, he breaks down his journey in his own words — his influences, his approach to making people move, and the unfiltered philosophy that fueled his music.

On Beat Tracks

Red Bull Music Academy: What do you mean by ‘beat tracks’?

Just a drum machine. It’s just a beat and nothing else; maybe it might have a little lyric. We noticed that a lot of the times the A-side [of the record] wouldn’t make people move as much as the B-side, so we would play the dub side or the B-side or just the track part of it and that became a whole style. The other music, the A-side, was for really deep house type of people. We was just young kids that wanted to get up and party and see girls shake they ass and shit, you know?

A few times a year, I go through my old collection and get me some wine and reminisce like, ‘Ah, I remember that!’ It helps inspire me.

On Juke and Footwork

Crack Magazine: A lot of people in the UK are getting into younger Chicago producers—even though no one here can really dance to it! What do you make of the juke and footwork sound?

I think it’s beautiful. When I came up, the BPM was maybe 120 to 130, and ‘national’ BPM was like 128. You can keep a motherfucker on the floor all night at 128. With the ghetto stuff, we set the BPM to 140, even though I fucked up a bit and sometimes set it to 150. With these guys they’re pushing it up to 160, and faster—so they can mix it with rap music and hip-hop, which is good. And I feel kind of honored that the shit I been doing has inspired some other shit.

On Dance Mania and the Struggles of Releasing Music

Red Bull Music Academy: How did it come to be that you got on the Dance Mania label in the first place? 

At first I put out my own record. This was 1993-ish. I was very young. I wanted to put a record out so bad, so I sold my waterbed – you know, I was a freak back in those days. I sold my car. I sold some of my DJ equipment. All to get the money up to actually put a record out. I pressed the record and went around to all the record stores in Chicago and put them on 30-day consignment and I made the money right back. 

Then, I found myself at Dance Mania; they had a distribution company and a record company. Ray pulled me to the side and he was like, “Hey man, I could sell a lot of these for you.” That’s when I did the “House the Groove” record. It didn’t take me no time to do that. I’m like, “Man, I’m a just throw this shit together.” It’s still one of my popular records, but it came from me investing in myself and putting my own record out. It was really expensive to do that shit back in the day.

Crack Magazine: What’s the state of play with Dance Mania now?

I own the company, but it’s really hard right now. I’ve bought up a lot of music, but I really want to put out Booty House Anthems 3 and piggyback other stuff off that. When I come out with that, there’ll probably be like 3-400 new songs on Dance Mania you can download. If you put out your pop record, even your techno record, it might have like hundreds of thousands [of dollars] behind it. But if you put out a ghetto house song, which might be a minute, two or three, it doesn’t have the same effect without all that money behind it. So you can put out all the tracks you want—they might all be ghetto hits—but unless you put out a full album, there’s not so much point.

On His DJing Style

We would play the records for a minute and a half to two minutes, or even shorter, depending on what we doing it for. It adds more energy because then you hearing track after track after track after track.

On the Iconic DJ Funk Hat

XLR8R: Do you still have your DJ Funk hat?

“Hell yeah I still have it! And I’m getting it fixed and I’m starting to wear it in a minute. That was a hood hat, for real. Some of my rhinestones fell off, but that’s alright. I’ll get me a couple of bucks and some glue.”

On Booty and Staying Young

So has there been as much booty in your life as there is on those anthems? Is that how you stay so skinny?

“There’s been way more than you can ever imagine! (laughs) Not to brag on it, but…yeah, lots of booze, lots of beautiful people—I’m an older cat now, but all of that keeps me young.”

The track he’d play at his funeral (via The Guardian)

DJ Funk: “Run (UK mix)“

If I don’t have an open casket I would like “Run,” but I really don’t want a funeral. I’d like to have a party so people remember all the good times and aren’t sad. Then at the afterparty there’ll be a lot of booty shaking with all my music played.